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I kinda wish you brought attention to the reticle they added for the homing attack. I feel like it helped a lot with informing the player that "yes, the enemy is locked in and you can use the homing attack without being launched into the abyss"

I could never get past the title screen of sonic 1, there was no prompt saying what button to press!!

5:10 this is the Sonic Adventure version of dying to the first goomba in Super Mario Bros.

I remember showing Sonic Mania to my roommate a few years ago and his response to seeing Studiopolis was "what the fuck is going on? I am, like, overwhelmed"

seeing people fail at sonic games should be a type of torture

Sonic games have this magical property that every non-sonic fan picking it up would be hit with an orb of confusion and forget how to play videogames in general.

Yeah, haha could you imagine being bad at Sonic?
*Slowly glances towards Arin Hanson*

We're not bad at Sonic games, Sonic is bad at our games

You say that jumping in the 2D games is easy for people to understand, but you don't know how many people I've seen not know that holding jump makes you jump higher.

I used to hate tutorial fairies like navi and omachao because I thought it was stupid to have a character follow you around telling you to be careful not to fall off of the edge or to press a to open a door or climb a ladder but, after watching those people keep jumping into the pit because the can't figure out the jump button leads me to believe they are still needed.

4:23 Hearing Sonic himself complain about his own game is absolutely hilarious.

This reminded me of how i was so bad at 2D Sonic.
Especially the first 3, I didn’t realise the game was actually an adventuring game. Speed isn’t something you just do in sonic. It’s something you earn.

When you mentioned “trying to play the games while avoiding as much automation as possible,” you mostly described the process of speedrunning them. The automation is generally slower, and as you stated, the characters are more than capable of maneuvering without it. That’s why I love these speedruns, it feels like you’re pulling off the training wheels to reveal the true game that was there all along

5:44 Honestly it be more surprising if he WASN'T bad at playing Sonic.

Back in the day, people would read the manual before playing the game.

There's something with Sonic games where people just refuse to learn the controls, only relying on jump and homing all the time

I think the big issue is that Sonic games require you to trust them, while other games teach fundamentally to distrust. To be more careful, take it safer. Meanwhile Sonic is, ironically, the easiest when you play the riskier, when you let the level design fling you around, throw you from one thing to another, while you blindly let it happen. The obstacles are usually designed to harm you when you try to do the opposite of what the level design wants you to do, reject the gifts and guidance it gives you - turn when you can just go forward to avoid enemies, slow down when you've got some speed before the jump, take the platforming section slow instead of jumping over entire pit at full speed.
People suck at Sonic because they distrust the game. They fight it instead of flowing. The more they fight, the more they crave control, like trying to homing attack on platforms in City Escape because it's something they can do, it's under their control. And they lose the fight... They needed something to ease them in... to tell them that they are safe in the embrace of the flow of the level design. And therefore, came boost, the  "I trust you, game" button. The blue aura shows that you are protected and you hold it to trust its protection, to make it guide you along the stage. That's why they are more successful for newbies. It shows them that fast is safe and slow is dangerous. So they give in the flow easier.

I see so many newcomers to the series jump straight into a 2D Sonic game and immediately start holding right hoping to blitz through the stage because "Sonic is about going fast, why do I keep getting hit?"

They don't understand that speed is the reward for learning how to play the stage efficiently, when to jump, which routes are the quickest, etc.

I'm impressed by your ability to speak in five accents at once